Chapter 3 – Lydia - The Leash #3
Dom’s club is buried at the edge of the warehouse district. No sign. No lights. Just a brushed steel door set into a strip of shuttered storefronts, like a forgotten entry to nothing.
To the uninvited, it looks dead. To people like me? It hums.
The bouncers see me and step aside without a word. I descend the narrow corridor, the scent of leather and champagne and unspoken power threading through the walls like a second atmosphere.
And just like that, I’m back inside.
Back where I’m supposed to smile without meaning it.
Back under Dom’s thumb.
Back in the room where Silas might be watching again — and this time, I’ll be ready.
The club breathes around me.
Not in the way most places do. This isn’t some bar with flashing lights and wet-lipped laughter. This is clinical. Power masked as pleasure. The scent of polished leather, pure stillness, and the kind of tension you only feel right before a string snaps.
Dom’s world doesn’t throb with music. It pulses with control.
I don’t look for him. I don’t need to.
He knows the second I arrive. Always does.
I pass the front lounge, the booths lining the wall with couples already folding into each other’s darkness. I slide into the black again, heels measured, posture exact, chin just a notch higher than it needs to be.
Someone watches me as I pass.
Not someone new. That someone.
Silas.
He doesn’t blink.
Doesn’t smile.
Doesn’t pretend he’s not tracking my every step like he’s already decided where I’ll stop.
Dom is waiting near the back corridor, hand tucked in his trouser pocket like he has nowhere better to be… which is bullshit, and we both know it.
“You’re late,” he says.
I arch a brow. “You said tonight. You didn’t say when.”
He stares at me long enough that I feel it in my stomach, then turns and walks.
I follow.
The negotiation room is down a hallway that isn’t on the floor plan. The hallway itself smells of waxed wood and sweat. The kind of fear that doesn’t rise until the second before the door shuts.
Inside, the air shifts.
Three men. All dressed like they’ve played this game before. But I can already tell which one’s going to flinch. The one in the navy suit. He’s tapping his ring on the table, erratically, and it’s not out of boredom. It’s nerves. He won’t last.
Dom doesn’t sit.
He stands behind the leather chair he wants me in.
So, I take it.
It’s all posture now. Crossed legs. Perfect line of spine. The kind of elegance that was never about vanity — just war dressed in velvet.
None of them ask why I’m here.
Which means they know.
I don’t speak, and I don’t need to.
I feel Silas enter before I see him.
He moves like he owns secrets he hasn’t decided whether to share. Still in that suit. Still in that gaze. Like he’s already written the ending to this room and we just haven’t caught up.
I keep my eyes on the men across from me.
Let him watch.
Dom introduces him with a nod. “Silas Ward. You’ve met.”
It’s not a question.
The men acknowledge him with the kind of measured courtesy that lives somewhere between fear and forced respect.
He doesn’t take a seat, either. Instead, he opts to linger by the mirrored wall, hands clasped behind him like a man bored with the chessboard, waiting for someone to admit they’ve lost. It isn’t the same dominance Dom presents himself with; it’s a different effusion of power entirely.
I don’t flinch under it.
Even when I can feel his gaze like heat pressing at my temple.
The negotiation begins. Or pretends to.
The suits talk numbers.
Dom talks outcomes.
I say nothing.
The numbers they’re volleying around aren’t stock prices or property taxes.
They’re laundering estimates pertaining to a pipeline moving through a tech shell company in Prague.
Fronted as a start-up, backed by one of Drazen’s clients.
Dom wants more control over the percentages.
They want plausible deniability. Everyone’s lying.
The real kicker? It’s not about money. It never is.
It’s about who’s holding the leash you haven’t seen yet.
I don’t know how long the conversation goes on. I don’t check the time. Time doesn’t exist in places like this. Just signals. Pressure. The unsaid things that live between syllables.
Dom leans down once, close enough to speak only to me.
“Do you know who that is?” he asks.
I don’t answer. He knows I do.
But he wants to know how I’ll say it.
“He doesn’t blink,” I say finally. “That’s enough.”
Dom smiles. Cold. “Keep watching.”
I do.
But I also feel the shift. The men grow agitated. One flinches at the wrong name. Another corrects him with too much speed.
This isn’t a negotiation.
It’s an extraction.
Dom’s pulling something. Silas is logging everything.
And me?
I’m the pressure.
The woman in the chair who doesn’t speak but somehow still forces the truth to the surface.
The man in the navy suit finally breaks, parroting something about timelines. About supply routes. Something that doesn’t match the last thing he said.
Silas straightens just slightly.
Dom tilts his head.
And I look at the man like he’s already made himself obsolete.
The deal closes minutes later.
Or appears to.
Dom’s voice stays smooth. The man signs. His pen slips just enough to show his hand’s gone damp. He sets it down like it’s a weapon that failed him.
He never looks at me.
Smart man.
Dom thanks them. Offers nothing more.
The men leave, and so does Silas.
Dom and I stay.
He pours himself a drink. Doesn’t offer me one.
“You’re on point tonight,” he says.
“No leash today,” I reply.
A lie, but a good one.
He doesn’t argue.
“I need you again tomorrow,” he says. “Early. Before the meeting with Esco. There’s a prep brief on my desk.”
“I’m not your assistant, Dom.”
He raises a brow. “No. You’re my leverage.” The words find their mark—steady, honest, and uncomfortably true.
I walk past him without saying another word.
By the time I reach the corridor again, everything feels constricted, like the walls have closed in.
I pass the booth Silas used the first night. It’s empty now. But the memory isn’t.
That stare. That stillness.
That thing in him that saw right through every inch of what I was wearing and every mask I had underneath.
It’s him.
I know it now.
Not just a man.
A threat.
Or maybe worse — a mirror.
And the next time he watches me, I don’t think he’ll let me look away.